Autumn Disintegration Read online

  “Don’t forget about the others. Not everyone drinks, you know.”

  “We are thinking about the others. Look!” Webb smirked, holding up a bumper-size pack of disposable nappies. “For Ellie’s plastic baby!”

  Stokes let out a roar of laughter. Hollis was not impressed.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “There’s plenty of room,” Harte said again, clearly irritated. “When those lazy bastards actually come out here and start taking risks like we do every week, then I’ll start giving what they need a little more consideration. Until then, we’ll get the essentials, but I need booze. Me and Stokes are having a competition to see whose liver rots first.”

  “He’s got a point,” Lorna said quietly as she slipped past and dumped the food she’d been carrying.

  “I know,” Hollis admitted.

  “There’s loads of clothes and bedding back there,” Jas said as he stumbled toward them, his arms laden with bags. “They’ve got everything.”

  “Then we should get everything,” Stokes suggested, still keeping his distance from the workers, “and quick. The population are starting to show an interest.”

  “What?” Lorna asked, immediately concerned. “Where?”

  He pointed toward the back fence. There was a hole where several wooden slats had broken over time. Lorna crouched down and peered through the gap. Stokes was right. She could see a mass of spindly, unsteady legs on the other side of the fence. Hollis jogged back to where he’d left the van parked at the other end of the track. There was an unsurprisingly large crowd of corpses gathering outside the front of the store too.

  “Many?” Stokes asked when he returned.

  “Enough,” he answered, picking up more food. “We should get this lot shifted and get home.”

  7

  It was just after three in the afternoon, but it felt much later. The sun was beginning to sink lazily below the horizon, drenching the flats with hazy, warm orange light. The unexpected brightness and heat indoors was almost enough to give the illusion of it being an August afternoon, not postapocalyptic late October.

  The frenzied activity of earlier in the day had slowed to a virtual standstill. Since the looters had returned the group had scattered themselves throughout the building, each person taking a little treasure for themselves—some food or drink, clean bedding or fresh clothes. Jas sat alone in the corner of his room. Next to him the remains of the best meal he’d eaten in days was spread over the dirty carpet. It had all been cold, processed, high-sugar, nutrition-free crap but he didn’t care. It tasted relatively good and it filled his stomach and that, he decided, was all that mattered. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d last felt this full.

  The room was becoming dark save for a few slender shards of incandescent light which squeezed between the boards, covering a single narrow window just above his head, illuminating strips of peeling, water-stained wallpaper. Despite its shabby appearance, Jas liked the isolation of this particular flat and retreated to it often. One day he might make an effort and drag some sticks of furniture in here, he decided. Until then he was happy to relax on an inflatable camping mattress. He yawned, stretched, and rubbed his eyes. The effort of the morning had worn him out. Six weeks on and he was still finding it impossible to get used to this stop-start, stop-start existence. Life either ran at a snail’s pace or hurtled along at breakneck speed and there didn’t seem to be any in-between. Truth be told, he preferred it when things were moving quickly. He found it easier to lurch from crisis to crisis than to sit alone in cold, empty rooms like this and think. Because thinking, he’d discovered, inevitably meant remembering, and that still hurt as much as it had on the first day. He slipped his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out his wallet. He carried it everywhere with him, even though he had no need for it anymore. He took out the last remaining photograph of his wife and children, sandwiched between useless credit cards and redundant bank notes. There they were: Prisha, Seti, and Annia, still beautiful despite the horizontal crease in the picture which ran across their smiling faces. And just behind them, sitting with her arms around them all, was his Harj. God, how he missed her.

  “Bloody hell,” a voice yelled suddenly from one of the other flats nearby, distracting him from his darkening thoughts. It sounded like Driver or Gordon, and it seemed to have come from the general direction of the shared apartment. Jas jumped to his feet and ran toward the source of the sound, tucking the photo back into his wallet as he moved. What had happened now? He guessed it was probably a fight, most likely Webb and Lorna at each other’s throats again.

  Jas burst into the shared flat and immediately stopped and screwed up his face in disgust. The stench hit him like a punch in the face. Anita was leaning over the side of the sofa, spitting and retching. On the pale yellow carpet beside her was a puddle of vomit, the color and consistency of red wine. Most of the others who were in the flat were now standing around the edges of the room, backs pressed against the walls, as far as they could get from the foul-smelling, bilious mess on the floor. Only Caron was brave enough to get any closer, but even she was forced to quickly scuttle out of the way as Anita lunged forward and threw up again. The sound of her heaving, followed by the splatter and splash of vomit, made the bile rise in Jas’s throat and he struggled not to be sick himself. He leaned out of the door he’d just come through, desperate to get some air.

  “Can somebody get me something to clean this up with?” Caron asked as she scrubbed at the floor with a strip of sick-soaked rag. No one moved. “Come on!” she snapped, the tone of her voice finally prompting Gordon to start looking through some of the boxes of supplies which had been collected earlier. As Anita began to retch again Jas took the opportunity to get out. He stepped back out into the corridor and walked straight into Harte, who was coming the other way.

  “What’s going on in there?” he asked, concerned.

  “Anita’s chucking up,” Jas answered. “Must’ve eaten something dodgy.”

  “Something we brought back with us?”

  “How am I supposed to know? Go and have a look for yourself if you’re that interested.” He sighed, grimacing. His stomach was still churning.

  “No thanks,” Harte replied, gingerly peering around the edge of the door. “She’s probably just gorged herself like the rest of us. I’m not feeling too good…”

  “What’s all the noise?” Webb shouted, appearing at the end of the corridor with a can of lager in one hand and three more in the other. “Jesus, what’s that smell?”

  “Anita’s sick,” Harte replied. He watched Webb stop and consider his options. It didn’t take him long to decide what to do next.

  “Fucking stinks in here,” he said over his shoulder as he turned and walked away.

  8

  Webb clattered down the stairs, spinning quickly around as he reached the bottom of each flight, desperate to get out of the drab concrete building. Having spent some time outside today he felt more confined by his gray-walled surroundings than ever, and the stench of Anita’s vomit just now had been the final straw. If he’d been able to drive he might even have risked getting into a car and disappearing for a while. Sometimes there wasn’t much to choose between spending the evening with the dead outside or the morbid, miserable fuckers inside. The last thing he wanted was to sit there and listen to their tedious conversation going around and around in circles until someone got upset or started a fight—that was inevitably what happened. He felt trapped. The whole world was empty and he was free to leave at any time, but he still felt trapped.

  In the shadows of the block of flats, near to the area where they collected rainwater, Webb kept his pride and joy. To the others it was just another car but to him it was an escape. Sure, it wasn’t much of an escape given that he couldn’t drive it, but it was something. It wasn’t what he’d have chosen if he’d had more of a choice, and he knew his mates would have laughed at him if they’d seen its color and the engine
size, but it was where he was able to find a little sanctuary. He climbed in, shut the door and turned the key in the ignition just far enough around so that he could switch on the stereo. A CD clicked and whirred in the player. After a few moments of silence the inside of the car was filled with the relentless thump, thump, thump of high-speed dance music so deafeningly loud that it made the windows and door panels rattle and vibrate.

  Webb pushed himself back into the driver’s seat and looked out into the distance, hoping for a while that the beer and the noise would enable him to fool himself into believing this was a normal night in a normal world.

  * * *

  After three and a half cans of lager and more than an hour’s sleep, Webb woke up in darkness. The CD had finished and everything was silent save for a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He felt nauseous and so drank the last of his beer to make himself feel better.

  He was sure he could see movement up ahead. Who was it? It was rare for any of the others to come out looking for him after dark. Struggling with the controls, he eventually managed to switch the headlamps on full-beam. Just a few meters in front of him, dragging itself forward on unresponsive feet, a single rotting body had somehow managed to break free from the crowds below and find a way over the blockade. He’d only seen a handful of them climb this far up the hill before. The repulsive creature’s movements were painfully slow, and yet it seemed to have an undeniable air of determination about it. It had altered direction and sped up slightly when he’d switched on the lights. Curious, Webb got out of the car and went around to the boot in search of a weapon. He’d stupidly left his baseball bat inside, figuring the less he took out with him, the more beer he could carry. He grabbed the short metal handle from the jack and walked over to the swaying cadaver, which was still illuminated by the light from the car. He stopped a short distance away and waited for it to haul itself closer.

  “Come on, then,” he said, loud enough that the corpse reacted to his voice. The monstrosity obliged, taking another few awkward steps forward until it was little more than a meter away. Webb lifted the metal bar, ready to smash in what was left of its face.

  And then it stopped.

  The corpse stood face-to-face with Webb. What the hell was it doing? He’d never seen one of them stop like that before. They always kept moving, even when there was nowhere for them to go. For a few seconds he stared deep into the black, emotionless pits of its eyes. It had been male—he could tell from what was left of its clothing—and it had been of similar height and build to him when it had died. Its bottom lip was swollen and split down to its chin, revealing a gaping black hole with a few remaining yellow tombstone teeth inside which jutted out at unnatural angles. Its discolored, disfigured face was unrecognizable but who knows, he thought, maybe he’d known this person. Perhaps this was all that remained of someone he used to hang out with, or maybe it was—

  The creature threw itself at Webb, abruptly ending the bizarre standoff. Clawed hands held high, it grabbed at his face. He responded with a single, well-aimed swipe of the metal bar to the side of its head, strong enough to hack it down to its knees. His second swipe did more damage, the third and fourth even more. By Webb’s fifteenth strike, little of the head remained save for a mass of bloody pulp and shattered fragments of skull and jaw. Breathless, Webb looked around anxiously, worried that more bodies might have managed to follow this one up the hill. There was nothing. Everything was clear.

  9

  Both Stokes and Webb were up unusually early the following morning.

  “Where are you two going?” Jas asked as they began to walk down the hill away from the flats. He shielded his eyes from the early morning sun which climbed over the ruins of the dead city in the distance. He always felt nervous when they were together like this.

  “Therapy,” Stokes answered, his voice sounding surprisingly cheerful. “Webb’s feeling a little tense today. Thought it might do him good to take out his frustrations on a few of our friends down below.”

  He kept walking, forcing Jas to have to shout to make his next question heard.

  “And what exactly is it you’re going to do?”

  “Still smells indoors,” he said, being deliberately vague and holding up a plastic bag bulging with food and drink. “We thought we’d have breakfast outside this morning.”

  “Nosy bastard,” Webb grumbled. Jas was still shouting after them, but they both ignored him and carried on walking down the hill.

  “Ah, don’t worry about him,” Stoke said. “He’s just trying to let us know he’s in charge. Him and Hollis are like a pair of bloody mother hens. They nag me more than my old missus ever did!”

  Webb smirked as he swung his baseball bat around, loosening his shoulders in preparation for the fight. Stokes glanced back over his shoulder. Jas had disappeared. Probably gone back inside to moan to the others about them, he thought.

  The sweeping hill in front of them resembled a series of interconnected bomb sites. Hardly anything remained of the lowest block of flats and over time the bodies had managed to encroach on most of the uneven land where the building had originally stood. The sudden apocalypse had abruptly halted work on the second building midway through its demolition. One wing had already been completely leveled, the other reduced to a windowless, skeletal frame. The rubbish-strewn area had been enclosed by a wire-mesh fence, originally erected to keep vandals and other timewasters at bay. Two large diggers had been abandoned nearby and, once the group had worked out how to drive them, the powerful machines had proved useful in shifting tons of debris, beaten-up cars, and other wreckage to construct the ugly but effective barricade between the ruins of the first two buildings. Uneven and improvised it might have been, but it had successfully kept the ever-growing mass of corpses at bay for weeks now.

  Webb and Stokes reached the wire-mesh enclosure. Stokes lifted a loose section of fence and Webb ducked down and went through like a fighter entering the ring through the ropes. Together they walked out into the center of the large patch of waste-ground, dotted with piles of masonry and the occasional sprouting of weeds. They used this area as a training ground of sorts, a place where Webb could flex his muscles and the older man could flex his vocal cords. Webb fancied himself as a welterweight champion. Stokes fancied himself as his coach.

  “How many you going for today?” he asked. Webb stared back through the wire mesh at the hordes of bodies a short distance away.

  “I’ll start with five. Way I feel, though, I could get rid of the whole fucking lot of them.”

  “Just see how you get on,” Stokes suggested, perching himself on a seat of crumbling brickwork and opening his first can of beer of the day. “Take your time. There’s no rush.”

  Webb continued to look deep into the endless mass of loathsome figures, eyeing up potential opponents for the one-sided sparring session he was planning. He knew it didn’t matter which monstrosity he plucked from the crowd—one worthless, maggot-ridden, decaying piece of shit was the same as the next. Running forward, he peeled a previously prepared section of the wire fence back in on itself, scrambled through the hole he’d made, and then jogged out toward the corpses. He climbed up onto the crumpled bonnet of an old black taxi, then reached down and grabbed the shoulders of the nearest body. He lifted its light, withered frame and, in a single movement, threw it over the taxi and back toward the hole in the fence through which he’d just emerged. It landed in an undignified heap in the dust, arms and legs everywhere, then immediately dragged itself up and began to stagger back in his direction. He paid it little attention, concentrating instead on plucking more writhing creatures from the crowd. Many vicious, thrashing hands reached up into the air as if volunteering for slaughter. He ignored them as he quickly hauled another four diseased figures over onto the other side of the blockade. He herded them back toward his arena. For the most part they conveniently followed him and he shoved each of them down through the gap when they were close enough. If they tried to retaliate or resist he
simply threw them to the ground, then kicked and punched them through to the other side of the fence.

  “Fuck me, look at that one!” Stokes laughed as Webb forced the last cadaver through the hole in the mesh. “No arms!” Howling with laughter he pointed at the naked remains of a middle-aged woman which stumbled back toward Webb as he closed and secured the fence. The pitiful carcass had somehow managed to lose both arms, one at the shoulder and the other just below the elbow. The longer of its two stumps twitched angrily. “Christ, Webb, fighting a dead woman with no arms? You really know how to pick them, don’t you! You bloody idiot!”

  “Piss off,” Webb snapped as he sized up his wretched opponents. He picked up his baseball bat and watched the five empty shells as they slowly lumbered across the wasteland toward him. Their already awkward and unsteady gait was worsened by the uneven ground beneath their decaying feet. Several of them fell as they moved toward him, hitting the dirt with force and immediately hauling themselves back up again, not a flicker of emotion showing on their grotesque, deformed faces. Stokes watched closely as he slugged back his beer, lifting his legs out of the way as one of the creatures stumbled uncomfortably near.

  “Take your time,” he instructed, stifling a gassy belch and lowering his voice when the body that had just passed him turned back and shuffled toward him again. “Nothing clever, son, just take your time.”

  Webb wasn’t listening. He’d already chosen his first victim. He advanced quickly toward the shell of a six-week-dead firefighter. It looked vaguely comical in its oversize protective jacket. It might have fitted once, but weeks of emaciation had reduced the size and bulk of the body considerably so that it now looked like a child that had stolen the jacket from a dressing-up box. Its helmet had slipped off its shrunken head and now hung around its neck by the strap. With a sudden roar of exertion Webb swung his baseball bat around in a climbing arc, thumping it up into the dead firefighter’s chin. The force of impact flung the body up into the air. It crashed down at the feet of another shambling corpse. Webb rushed toward both of them with predatory speed, planting his boot on the chest of the body on the deck and swinging a wild punch at the other creature. More through luck than judgment he caught it full-on square in the face with maximum force. His leather-gloved hand sunk deep into its flesh. He quickly pulled it back again and shook it clean as the faceless cadaver crumbled.